Dreams Of Endless Summer
A Beach Boys Timeline 1917-2009
    This timeline aims to provide a reasonable, though by no means exhaustive, overview of the long, involved and
sometimes fraught history of The Beach Boys. All major single and album releases are noted, as are the major
events in the lives of the principal band members. While all major overseas tours and individual landmark US
concerts are mentioned, no attempt has been made to document all domestic concert dates, for two main
reasons; one, there have been literally thousands of them... and two, until recently, the early years were not well documented. However, with the advent of the Badman book, and the ensuing furore concerning the accuracy of same, the band's shows are now much more fully documented. Anyone wishing to explore this subject more thoroughly is advised to check out the tours/sessions section of this site, and also Eric Anniversario's excellent
and extensive setlist archive. Brian's post 1998 solo tours are detailed here. Similarly, anyone wishing more comprehensive discographical information covering both the US and UK releases should visit this discography.
 
    Sessions are another matter entirely; whilst integral to the Beach Boys history, they are not comprehensively
documented after the sixties, and the first Capitol era (and even those are not 100% accurate), thus any listing
would inevitably contain gaps and omissions. At one time there were two books in the offing which would have
covered this ground: Russ Wuspensky was attempting to document every session held in Los Angeles after the Second World War, while Brad Elliott was undertaking the scarcely less monumental task of doing the same for
every single Beach Boys and related session: however it is now almost certain that the Elliot project will never happen, whilst Wapensky's contract with his publishers was cancelled in the early 2000s. However, an attempt to do as good a job as possible on the sessions has been incorporated into the tours/sessions section.
 
    Throughout the timeline, album titles are noted in Bold Italic, TV shows by "Italics inside quotes" and movies
by plain italics. Book titles are shown in bold, as are the names of those no longer with us on their passing. Some events cannot be exactly dated at present, thus for the purposes of this timeline, winter is December, January & February; spring is March, April & May; summer is June, July & August; and fall is September, October & November
  
    Obviously I cannot begin to pretend that any of this is all my own work - all I've done is gather existing
wisdom, cross-check it and arrange it into a sequence that is logical and (hopefully) readable. For providing the
original material and research, I'm indebted to the following sources:
 
Surfs' Up ! The Beach Boys On Record 1961-1981 by Brad Elliott
The Beach Boys by David Leaf (1978 & 1985 editions)
Heroes And Villains - The True Story Of The Beach Boys by Stephen Gaines
The Nearest Faraway Place by Timothy White
Dennis Wilson - The Real Beach Boy by Jon Stebbins
Dumb Angel by Adam Webb
Wouldn't It Be Nice - My Own Story by Todd Gold & Eugene Landy with Brian Wilson
Our Favorite Recording Sessions by Stephen McParland
The Wilson Project by Stephen McParland
Tape #10 by Stephen McParland
The California Sound - A Musical Biography Of Gary Lee Usher by Stephen McParland
The Guinness Book Of Rock Stars
The Complete Guide To The Music Of The Beach Boys by Andrew G. Doe & John Tobler
   (1997 & 2004 editions)
The Complete Book Of The British Charts
The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits
Back To The Beach by Kingsley Abbott
The Beach Boys by Byron Preiss
Dumb Angel Gazette #1, 2, 3 &4 edited by Domenic Priore
Beach Boys Stomp 1977 to date
Beach Boys Britain 1999 to date
The Beach Boys On CD - an illustrated guide by Joe Thomas
The Beach Boys: the definitive diary of America's greatest band on stage and in the studio
   by Keith Badman
Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall & Redemption Of Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin
The Lost Beach Boy: The True Story Of David Marks by Jon Stebbins & David Marks
All the US & UK music press 1963-date, notably NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy &
   Phonograph Record.
The Middlefield Archives
The Chris Branch Archives
Brother Records
The liner notes for all Beach Boys and related reissues since the 1990 Capitol 2fers
The many Beach Boys and/or Brian Wilson websites and mailing lists, notably the Pet Sounds Mailing List, the
California Saga ML, the Net Sounds Message Board, the Beach Boys Britain MB, the SMiLE Shop MB,
brianwilson.com, the famed Cabinessence site, californiasaga.com,  the Endless Summer Quarterly site, the
official BBFC site, the Imagination site, the Dennis Wilson Dreamer site and an especial mention for the
very best Beach Boys resource on the web, beachboys.com. [note: such is the nature of the internet that some
of these sites may have moved, or no longer exist]
 
    Individuals who have helped me immensely are (in no particular order beyond alphabetical): Panayiotis
Bogadanos, Alan Boyd, the late Chuck Britz, Stephen W. Desper, Brad Elliott, Patricia Ferelli, Mike Grant,
Anne-Marie Gregory, Probyn Gregory, Coach Bob Hanes, Billy Hinsche, Val Johnson-Howe, Bruce Johnston,
Barbara Lang,  Susan Lang, Melinda Love, Raymond J. McCarthy, David & Carrie Marks, Cameron Mott,
Graeme Norris, Peter Reum, Ian Rusten, Darian Sahanaja, Craig Slowinski, Jon Stebbins, Gary Winfrey, Gary
Zenker and several others who prefer to remain unsung.
 
   This is naturally a work in progress, rife with errors, duplications and omissions. Corrections, clarifications and
additional information will be welcomed with open arms and a credit. Send them to bellagio@btinternet.com,
putting 'timeline' in the subject box. I thank you in advance.

   Navigation is simple - just click on the year below; there's also internal navigation of the 'previous' and 'next'
variety. It's clunky, but it works.
 
2010
 
 
 
 
 
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This timeline is dedicated to all Beach Boys fans, historians and researchers,
whose commitment to unearthing the truth is as relentless as it is disturbing.
In the words of Mike Love, "these guys know more about us than we do !"
And he's probably right...
 
Created by Andrew G. Doe February 24th, 2002
Last updated March 22nd, 2009